I was a senior in high school the first time I did a downward facing dog. Yoga was becoming a “thing,” and if I’m honest with myself I’m sure that’s why I wanted to give it a try. But as soon as I stepped onto that mat – at Yoga Haven in Tuckahoe back in 2003 – I knew Yoga was going to be more than just a passing fad in my life. Yoga was exercise, yes. But also so much more. It provided a sense of belonging, of being part of a community, and gave me permission to tune into my intuition. A lot has changed in my life since that first yoga class – college, grad school, a move halfway across the country and back again, marriage, kids – but my yoga practice has been constant.

 By teaming up with Betsy to reopen Yoga Haven, it may seem like my life has come full circle. But my journey back to a yoga studio in Tuckahoe has been anything but tidy circle. I spent more than a decade as an educator, first in New Haven, CT and Providence, RI before moving west, where I helped found The Peak School, a magical progressive middle and high school in the Colorado Rockies. After returning to New York and getting married, I decided to try my hand at starting a small business. I bought a 1951 Chevy farm truck and outfitted it as a mobile flower shop. The Sprig Flower Truck was a staple at Westchester farmers markets the summer of 2019, turning heads and selling locally-grown blooms. Despite a loyal following, Sprig wasn’t meant to be. I just couldn’t make it work, especially once COVID hit. I sold the truck in spring of 2020 to Yoga Haven’s new neighbors, Broken Bow Brewery, just up Marbledale where it now brings smiles folks hanging out in their beer garden.

In the fall of 2020, I went back to teaching, this time at in Stamford, Connecticut, and started a family. It was wonderful, and isolating, and crazy every day. Through the tumult - classroom teaching, pregnancy, and early motherhood in a pandemic - yoga kept me grounded. YouTube and live streamed yoga classes were a lifeline – allowing me to continue my practice while the world seemed to be falling apart and my world (professional and personal) was turned upside down. But once things eased up, I craved a deeper yoga practice than YouTube and Zoom could offer.

I had met Betsy one day when I owned Sprig, but I reached out again last summer because I wanted to train to be a yoga instructor. We talked. And talked. And talked. Before the conversation was over I knew our partnership was going to be much more than teacher training.  Betsy and I were going to team up to bring Yoga Haven back to lower Westchester.

While coming full circle is a nice way to think of this endeavor, I’ve lived enough to know that life’s journey is messier than that, and that joining Betsy to re-open Yoga Haven is the start of another, beautiful, windy road that will surely be filled with life’s surprises. In reopening Yoga Haven, we are creating our shared vision for a community space, the kind of community I’d first encountered twenty-one years earlier at that studio in Tuckahoe. Our hope is that people in all stages and ages of life will come together at Yoga Haven to experience the wellness and sense of belonging that can only happen in community.